travel tour

MercyMe has gone to great lengths to try not to be away from home too much. When we plan a tour, we only book a few days out the week, so that we can still be husbands and dads.

Well, for me, April slipped through the cracks. Sometimes you say yes to things as far as a year in advance when the calendar looks wide open. Sometimes you keep saying yes, and suddenly, when the time comes, you freak out wondering how April got so slammed. Well guess what? Let freaking out commence.

Let’s see if I can explain, in detail, how April will go for me. It all actually started the last week of March with me in Nashville working on my solo album, “Hymned Again.” I finished vocals at roughly 3am on April 2nd and I went straight to my car and drove 9 hours getting home roughly at noon on the 2nd. I was home for the rest of the 2nd and 3rd, and right now, April 4th, I am typing this on a flight to Chicago for a MercyMe show tonight. We then have a show in Wisconsin tomorrow night, and a show in Iowa on Sunday. On Monday, April 7th, I will fly into Dallas with just enough time to meet my wife at the airport to catch another flight to Boston.

We are going to Fenway park for opening day…let me just say I am giddy with anticipation. Away with my wife and my first trip to Fenway! Can life get any better? I submit to you it cannot. Ok where was I…oh yeah…so I fly back home from Boston on Wednesday the 9th, and then fly out to Las Vegas on the 10th for a show at Nellis air force base. The show is actually on the 11th, but we have to soundcheck the night before, so it adds an extra day of being away from home. We then fly home from Vegas on the 12th where I will meet up with my family for a Texas Rangers game where Third Day happens to be performing as well. Gotta support your buddies any chance you can get. Are we tired yet? Heck I am tired right now.

Sunday the 13th I am home, and able to go to my home church, thank the Lord, and then on Monday the 14th I head to good ol’ London. Yep you read right, London. And here is the kicker…it is for one day. You may not realize this, but 2009 will be 10 years since I first wrote “I Can Only Imagine” and I have been given the opportunity to record “Imagine” with the entire London symphony at abbey road studios for a very special project we are working on. So I fly to London on the 14th, sing on the 15th and fly home on the 16th. Jet lag you say? Who has time for jet lag? Not me.

I am off to Colorado Springs the very next day on the 17th. I am there for two days and then fly to Jackson, TN for a show the night of the 19th. After that, we drive into Nashville for 4 fun filled days at the Gospel Music Association convention thingy and dove awards. Then after the band heads home, I stay over for 2 more days to wrap up my solo project followed by me flying back to Dallas on the 26th to meet up with the band for a show in Alvaredo, TX. This show will be emotional for me because it will be the end of a crazy month. I will be hugging people, singing friends are friends forever…you know, just like the last day of church camp.

The good news is I am home the entire month of May, but first I gotta get there. So if you have read all of this and not gone cross-eyed, I applaud you, and ask that you would pray for my family through this tough time. And pray that May will be such a special time together with my family that April might be forgotten.